


With My Soul Clenched

by jessebee



Series: Side-Slip [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst, Characters Talking Crap Out What Should Have Happened Sooner, Fix-It, Friendships & Forgiveness, M/M, Messy Emotional Splatters, No Romance in this one folks, Only vague hints and allegations, Pre-Slash, Qui-Gon Lives, Sand!, Severe Past Emotional Trauma, The Fic What Ate My Brain, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Unexplained Time Travel Shenanigans, a bit of amnesia, because I said so, okay this is Part One anyway, the Force works in mysterious ways, this is it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2019-01-21 08:18:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12453330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessebee/pseuds/jessebee
Summary: Obi-Wan Kenobi wakes up, and nothing is anything like he could have imagined.





	1. Awakened

_I remembered you with my soul clenched  
in that sadness of mine that you know._

_Pablo Neruda_

* * *

 

 

_breathe_

_breathe_

– sounds now but distant but closer and better or not but breathe, breathe out uncertainly and panic and breathe in peace assurance certainty the Force, luminous are we all not this crude matter but while matter we are we must do certain things must still go on and one of them is to breathe, to breathe, to –

“ – breathe, young man, you're not going to do this, you're not giving up after my son's brought you this far, listen to me, do you hear me? Breathe. Breathe – ”

 _~_ _Obi-Wan!_ _~_

“ _Breathe!”_

Pain and he moved, as he moved, arched up violently as his lungs finally obeyed and there was air, air, sweet and warm, but he wasn't, he was, was cold? How? He was – another dragging breath it smelled like –

His eyes snapped open.

Dark hair, dark eyes – familiar? No, but – He squeezed his eyes shut and pried them open again but the view didn't change, still that concerned, careworn, dark-haired – Woman. Familiar. He didn't know her.

What in seven Sith hells?

She watched him closely as he panted, gasping, lungs aching. Everything ached. Kriffing hells, he felt _horrible_.

“Are you with us this time, young man?”

Was he what? Wait –

“Ben? Do you understand me?”

… Ben?

Oh, no. No. Nono _no_ –

“Obi-Wan?”

Obi-Wan’s head jerked around so hard he heard tendons creak.

A young child, a boy. Blond, blue-eyed. Force presence bursting over him like a sun going nova, cracking his own into sudden, painful half-life.

Completely, totally familiar.

He tried to speak. Failed. Tried again. “… Anakin?”

He lost what air he’d found as the boy surged into his lap, arms wrapping around his neck as far the child could reach, gabbling and shaking. “It’s you! You remember, it’s you, it _is,_ you _remember,_ oh gods, Obi-Wan – ”

“Ani, be careful,” the woman cautioned.

Obi-Wan closed his arms automatically around the boy, around _Anakin!_ , smelling sweat and sand and his padawan’s unique scent, and he blinked at the woman, because that meant –

Anakin hiccuped. “’s okay, Mom, I know him.”

“I know you do, but – ”

“ – no, I _know_ him,” Anakin repeated, sitting away only enough to drag a rough-spun sleeve over his eyes. “Like, like I told you. From – before.”

Anakin’s mother. Shmi Skywalker. A woman Obi-Wan had never met.

“W-what is this?” Gods, was that his voice? Faint, hoarse, like he’d been screaming. Had he been? Little farking _gods_ , but he didn't understand this, _any_ of this, this was _impossible_ , this was – “I’m mad, yes? Because I was dead, _you_ were dead – ”

He cupped his hand around the side of Anakin’s face. His fingers were shaking. _He_ was shaking. “It was over, we were in the Force, were, were – I c-caught you and Q-qui-Gon was there – ”

Anakin looked back at him with damp blue eyes.

“ – and now I’m not and I’m – awake and this is s-some, some sort of _hell_ – ”

“No, but close,” Anakin said, wetly, and sniffled hard. “It’s Tatooine.”

 

*

 

His name was Ben Lars, and he was a spice-head.

“Lars? But … they changed that. My parents changed it when they gave me to the Temple.” Obi-Wan dragged an unsteady hand through his lank, much-too-long hair again. His head ached abominably, and thinking was like climbing one of the Temple towers on foot. Without the Force. “And I'm a what?”

“Spice addict,” Anakin clarified, hopping up into his own chair. “For years, they told me. But we’ll get that outta you, now that you’re awake.”

That did at least explain the shakes and the nausea and maybe the awful muffling of his Force-sense, too, and the weakness that had about floored him on the short stagger between the bed he’d been lying in and the eating table. And why he was in such awful physical condition.

There had been a tenday-worth of lagtime, as near as Anakin had been able to figure. Anakin had woken from three days of fever to find himself somehow alive, transported back into his child's body with the memories of half the life he'd already lived stuffed into his head.

He'd been terrified at first, despite the heart-stopping joy of seeing his mother, and sure that he was going insane – again. But then on his first venture out of their hovel, Anakin had literally tripped over the body of the skinny, bedraggled barely-adult the locals knew as Ben Lars, overdosed and delirious in an alley two streets away, and convinced his mother to help drag him home. And told her everything.

The more amazing thing was that Shmi had believed her son. But she was more than a little Force-sensitive herself – she had to be. He nearly laughed – she was certainly more than Obi-Wan himself at the moment.

“Temporal theory was nowhere close to my best subject, I don't think,” Anakin went on, scooping _ahrisa_ onto his plate from the bigger serving bowl in the middle of the table. His padawan had always preferred spicy-hot foods and after his own nineteen years on this sand-pile, Obi-Wan understood why. “How? The Force? No clue. But – ” he spread his small-child hands, “ – we’re here. We’ve got another chance, to do it right this time. And you’re _**here**_ , so already it’s different.”

Obi-Wan had another nibble of his own thankfully bland toast, hoping it would stay where he’d just put it. “How old are you, now?”

“Seven, 'ccording t' Mom,” Anakin said, around a mouthful of bread.

“Manners, Ani.” Shmi lifted an eyebrow.

Anakin’s expression when he looked at her was a little bit of childish pique and a planet-full of adoration. Obi-Wan bit the inside of his lip – no wonder her death had hit Anakin so hard.

Anakin swallowed. “Yes, Mom. So it’s maybe, uhm, two years? Before you and Master Qui-Gon arrive? Only … ”

He put down his fork and his distress trickled through the old training bond that was somehow there between them again. A link Obi-Wan was clinging to with both mental hands and not ashamed to admit it. “I guess,” Anakin said slowly, “it’s – only him, now.”

It hit Obi-Wan like a star cruiser crashing down on him. Because if he was _here_ , now, back decades in time, on the planet he hadn't grown up on and in a body he barely recognized as his own –

– then he’d never been a Jedi.

Never been given up to the Searchers as a toddler. Never gone to the Temple on Coruscant. Never entered the creche. Never – He wiped a shaking hand down over his chin in decades’ old habit and shuddered at the feel of barely-stubbled, too-young skin, and shut his eyes.

Never been padawan to Qui-Gon Jinn.

What in all the deepest Sithhells was he going to do now?

“Obi-Wan?”

A rustle of sound, a touch on his hand. “Obi-Wan. Breathe out, lose the panic.”

When he opened his eyes, Anakin was leaning half-way across the table, probably standing on his chair to do it, and his much smaller fingers were wrapped around Obi-Wan's. Determination shone in blue eyes and flowed strongly enough in the Force that Obi-Wan could feel it and he could have cried, it felt so good, so familiar.

“I'm probably more confused than you are,” Anakin said, “but we're gonna do this. If this is, is happening again, then we're gonna make it better this time. We're going to make it right,” the adult he was coming clearly through the child's voice, despite the faint tremble. “First thing is to get you better, get you back in shape. You remember more, right? It's all still there, all your training? In your head? So we just gotta make your body believe it.”

 _Breathe out the panic, breathe in the peace of the Force._ One of the oldest lessons of all, among the earliest things taught in the creche. Obi-Wan found a shaky smile and turned his hand under Anakin’s, gripping the small fingers. “When did you get so smart?”

Anakin grinned back, none too steady himself. “I had a really good teacher.”

 

*

 

“What do you remember?”

“I asked you first,” Anakin shot back and then seemed to catch himself, and grinned, a little sheepishly.

Obi-Wan snorted despite himself, and smiled back. The expression felt a bit unused, like something he hadn't done in too long.

He'd slept for a day or more, only to wake again panicked and disoriented, with too many memories alive and his Force-sense still deadened, and the shakes and fever of spice-withdrawal on top of it all. He'd been grounded to this _here_ and _now_ by the touch of Anakin's hands, his old padawan having stayed in the room with him.

He looked at Anakin sitting across the table from him, listened with half an ear to Shmi moving at the counter, and tried to ignore the withdrawal tremors rocking him at odd intervals. The room smelled familiar, adobe and sand and a faint tinge of biofuel.

“I remember … ” Obi-Wan struggled to collect his thoughts, to separate out just a few from the billions cramming his head. “The first time we met, you smiled at me, like you just did, and offered me your hand.”

Anakin thought about that and grinned again, happily this time. “I did, didn't I?”

“Of course you did,” Shmi said, setting down a mug and a plate filled with more bland food in front of Obi-Wan before settling into her own chair. “I raised a polite young man.” She picked a strand of hair back from Anakin's forehead.

Obi-Wan swallowed against a thickness in his throat. “You raised a wonderful young man, Lady Skywalker,” and shivered as another sudden tremor caught him.

“It's 'Shmi,' Ben. Obi-Wan,” Shmi corrected herself as she rose and came around the table to resettle the thin blanket around Obi-Wan's shoulders. The room wasn’t cold; the chill was inside him. “Don't make me swat you. I'm fairly strong, and you don't have enough on your bones to pad you, yet.”

Obi-Wan found a smile for her as well as she resumed her chair across from him. “Either name is fine. Shmi,” he said, and got her smile in return. “Perhaps 'Ben' would be – easier. It's what you would know me as, in – in this … time … ” Force, how long would it take to come to grips with this?

“Eat some of that, Ben,” Shmi said, and Obi-Wan twitched, startled. He’d drifted off? Oh, he was in bad shape.

“And drink as much as you can. Withdrawal is never easy and you've got little energy to spare, even with your Force helping you.” Quite gently and utterly no-nonsense as well, and she had the tone and feeling down to an art.

Obi-Wan blinked. He hadn't needed “mothering” in decades. Had he? When was the last time anyone had even tried? He looked down into the mug. Bantha milk: far easier and much cheaper to get than water. He wrapped both hands around the pottery, trying to ignore the way they shook.

“I remember Padmé,” Anakin said, soft and a little thickly, as Obi-Wan raised the mug and sipped cautiously. “And that I loved her more than anything.”

Padmé. “You did,” Obi-Wan said, over the rim of his cup. Shmi looked utterly unsurprised, so Anakin must have spoken about her already. “From the very start, I think.”

“She was there at the end, wasn't she? When the … ” It took a moment for Anakin to find the words. “When the really, really bad things started happening?”

Calm. Calm. “She was. She loved you, Anakin. Fiercely. To her very last.”

“Were – you there?”

Obi-Wan nodded, setting the mug carefully on the table.

“Don't tell me.” Anakin shut his eyes. “Don't tell me. I – I said awful things to her. To you. Didn't I.”

“You did,” Obi-Wan repeated, as gently as he could. “But that's all over now. We have the chance to make this all go right, this time.”

Anakin nodded tightly and leaned into his mother, who had moved her chair closer.

Obi-Wan essayed some of the contents of the plate in front of him, having a few bites of the same bland bread Shmi had served him on his first attempt. He managed a few more nibbles this time, chewing carefully, before giving up and taking hold of the mug once more. If all this stayed down, then perhaps tomorrow he'd try something really adventurous, such as protein.

“I remember you cutting my hair that first time.” Anakin dropped the words into the quiet. “And doing my braid. I wanted it to be like yours, you know.”

Obi-Wan looked his question.

“That long,” Anakin clarified, “with the colored ties; I figured they must mean things. But when you did mine, yours was gone, and … you were so sad, I didn't wanna ask. You were sad for a long time.”

Stricken, Obi-Wan stared at him. “You felt that?” he whispered. Had his shielding been so fractured then that he'd hurt his apprentice with his own agony?

Anakin's mouth twisted into that little sideways expression he'd used so often as a child. “I didn't have to, really. You loved him and then there I was, and then he did that in the Council Chamber, and then he was gone and it was just us.”

Obi-Wan swallowed. The vibroblade in his chest cut as sharp as if it had all just happened yesterday, his emotional control nowhere to be found. Apparently time travel and rebirth shot all of one's Mastery to Sithhells and gone.

Anakin looked down at the table for a moment. “I knew how you felt, but I _didn't_ , you know? I didn't want to know, then, and I didn't understand it, not 'till years later. All I wanted then was to be a Knight so I could come back here and free everybody, and for you to, to like me.”

“Anakin.” Obi-Wan could barely breathe. Were they really doing this, now, here? In front of Shmi?

Yes. Yes, they were. Lance the wounds no matter how it would hurt, and drain them so they might begin to heal. “It wasn't _you_ , Anakin, it was never you. It was everything else around you. You were just a child in the middle of it all.”

“A dangerous child,” Anakin said wryly, but a whisper of that oldest wound, that very first cut, echoed faintly in the training bond.

“ _Ani_.” Obi-Wan unwrapped one hand from the mug and reached out before he could rethink and stop himself. “We were – we _are_ – _all_ of us dangerous, _all_ Jedi, every one of us,” he said, squeezing Anakin's fingers. “That was what I meant. A strong Force-connection _is_ dangerous, even with training and controls, the foundations to use the abilities only ever for peace, not power.

“You'd had none of those foundations and there you were, like a, a star, you were so bright and beautiful – you _shone_ , Ani, like a sun at midday. I wasn't even a Knight yet no matter what Q-qui-Gon said and then there you were, in my hands, to take care of, and you – I was – how was I going to manage that? Take care of you, raise you? Train you?” He found a shaky smile from somewhere. “I was frankly terrified.”

“You didn't want me, not then,” Anakin said roughly, blinking, possibly against the shimmer in his eyes. “Long as we're layin' this all out here … ”

“Not then,” Obi-Wan agreed, dragging the words out of himself. Like breathing broken glass. “But _you saved me,_ Ani. You did. You were my reason to get up out of bed on the worst mornings, when duty wasn't going to manage it. And I couldn't help but like you, and very shortly it was – more than that. Much more.”

“You never said,” Anakin whispered, his blue eyes wide and full.

Obi-Wan found another smile, tremulous as the first. “No. No, I didn't. I couldn't. I'm not sure I even knew how to, then. I couldn't – if I didn't acknowledge it, then it wouldn't hurt me, do you see? And if you didn't know, then you would not become attached to me and my loss, someday, would not hurt you as Qui-Gon's death hurt me. I realized years later that it wasn't logical, but – I think – that I was trying to protect you. It didn't work terribly well, did it?” he finished wryly.

“Obi-Wan.” Anakin pulled his hand away, climbed out of his chair and up into Obi-Wan's lap and hugged him, trembling. They were both trembling. _~We both kriffed that up pretty good, didn't we.~_

His padawan's mental voice. Faint, with a sort of static between that he didn't understand, the same thick curtain that was drawn over all aspects of his Force-sense, but there. So very loved and so very much, so very bitterly, missed.

 _~We did,~_ Obi-Wan sent back, closing his eyes against their own stinging and Shmi's gentle, far-too-perceptive stare, and rested them against Anakin's hair. _~Of all the times you didn't follow my lead, I wish that had been the foremost of them.~_

A snort, and then laughter flowed over the bond, still faint but distinct. _~_ _Force, I can barely hear you, but – you_ _'r_ _e teasing me, right?~_

Oh, that hurt and healed, at the same time. _~Yes I am, dear one; I am.~_

Anakin's arms tightened. _~I'm taking nothing for granted this time, do you hear me? Nothing. Get ready for loads of stupid,_ _annoying_ _questions I shoulda asked before.~_

Obi-Wan hugged back as much as he could. _~_ _Never stupid, not from you,_ _and_ _I look forward to every_ _single_ _'annoying'_ _one of them.~_

 

 

* * *

 


	2. Discovered

* * *

 

_(one Standard month later)_

 

“This is about those dreams of yours, isn't it?”

Qui-Gon Jinn opened his eyes and turned his head. “No, Micah, it is not.”

Micah Giiett – Jedi Master, sometime Council member and one of Qui-Gon's oldest friends, regarded him with that long-perfected look which said never mind about Jedi impartiality: he was judging Qui-Gon and judging him hard.

Qui-Gon sighed. “… from a certain point of view.”

“Ah.”

Micah settled his heavy shoulders more firmly against the cabin's bulkhead and waggled his fingers in a gesture clearly indicating that the previously deferred explanation should now be told. Qui-Gon repressed another sigh. Few beings were as dear to him as Micah Giiett, but that didn't mean dealing with the man wasn't a walking exercise in patience sometimes.

“We are en-route,” Qui-Gon said evenly, “to investigate the report of the report of an intense Force presence, that the Searchers who reported were not able to stop and seek out.”

“That's the official reason,” Micah agreed, his voice mild. “Which in no way actually describes why it is you who is doing the investigating. You have had exactly zero interest in taking a padawan for years, in spite of all of Yoda's poking at you about it, and you've never even been _on_ the Search Committee.” He detached himself from the wall and folded down onto the floor, just in front of where Qui-Gon was kneeling. “Why are you here, Qui-Gon?”

When cornered, deflect. “Why is a Councilor and one of the Order's most capable Combat Masters here, as well? This is hardly your regular sort of mission, Mic.”

Micah raised an eyebrow. “I'm here because if I'm not, you don't get my incredibly capable Padawan as a pilot. Add to that, there were no regular transports leaving for that sandpit of a world we are heading to soon enough to suit you, and I know for a fact just precisely how much you didn't want to wait. Don't change the subject because that will not get you off the hook.”

Ah, well, it had been worth a try. Micah was nothing like a diplomat, but then, he didn't have to be. Qui-Gon gave in. “The dreams have changed.”

Micah came to attention, although he didn't move.

“His face has changed, it seems younger and yet older. But mostly it’s – clothing, hair – he no longer looks like – my padawan.”

Because what else was Qui-Gon to call the vision that he'd been seeing – training, in his dreams – for years?

A red-haired human boy with a sharp intelligence and a wry sense of humor. Unshakable sense of duty and devotion to becoming a Jedi Knight, neither of which traits completely quelled the streak of irreverent mischief that resonated so strongly with Qui-Gon's own. A warm, brilliant, impish, thoroughly _good_ light – everything Qui-Gon hadn’t wanted but had needed – desperately – to help haul himself back from the edge. From the chasm he'd been close to after Xanatos, his second padawan, had Fallen.

Obi-Wan Kenobi, who had brought his Light to Qui-Gon's life and helped Qui-Gon regain his own, although they'd never so much as touched in the real worlds.

“Padawan” was the only term which had ever felt correct.

“He looks, and he feels, different, Mic. And he is no longer with me.”

“Ye-ah, okay, no, this is not confusing at all,” Micah said, eyebrows drawing together. He knew the details of more than a few of Qui-Gon's dreams, Micah did, because Qui-Gon had had to confide in someone else other than Yoda over the years or go crazy. “When did it change?”

“About a month ago. His hair is longer, yet his face is much thinner, and worn, as if something like an illness had taken him. And he is on an arid world, like the one we are heading toward, and he seems to have a companion, a young humanoid boy.”

“…and then?” Micah prompted, when Qui-Gon had been silent for a few minutes.

“And then … nothing.”

“Nothing?” Micah's eyes widened. “Almost what – eight years of 'dream training' and then it just – stopped?”

Qui-Gon swallowed. “The dreams have, yes. But the – connection, the training bond. That has grown stronger. More definite, settled, _solid_ in that way sometimes of a long-time apprentice. But shielded for the last month, and shielded well.” He held Micah's gaze. “It feels now almost exactly the way my other training bonds did, when stretched fine by distance. It's _r_ _eal_ , Mic. No longer in the realm of dreams.”

Micah stared at him, then let out a long, low whistle. “And what does the ancient and esteemed troll think about this?”

Qui-Gon shrugged. He'd released his turmoil into the Force, time and time again, and would undoubtedly repeat the process before they reached Tatooine. What happened then? Would be the Will of the Force, one way or another. “I am here with Yoda's blessing, am I not? To investigate this report of an unknown Force sensitive?”

Micah huffed. “Qui. Even if this _is_ him, somehow truly is the dream student you've had all these years, you must know that there's no way the Council will accept him. He'd have to be – what? Twenty Standard or more? You can't just walk him into the Order as your padawan.”

Qui-Gon regarded him, one eyebrow raised, and braced for impact. “Why not?”

“Why – ? _Qui_ -Gon – ”

“Micah.” Qui-Gon leaned forward. “The Force has been whispering in my head for years about Obi-Wan. One month ago that whisper became a hum, and when I heard the Search report it became almost a shout in my ears. Whether he comes as a student, my student – / _please merciful little gods let that be_ / – or something else entirely, he is meant  to be one of us. He _is_ one of us. Obi-Wan Kenobi _does_ exist, and he  is meant to be a Jedi Knight.”

Some moments of silence followed this, before Micah laid his hand on Qui-Gon's arm. “I just don't want to see you hurt again, creche-mate mine.”

A wry smile pulled at Qui-Gon's mouth. “Pain is inevitable in this existence, my friend. But I believe – I know – that Obi-Wan is nothing at all like Xanatos was. I must follow the Will of the Force.”

“As should we all,” Micah said, and squeezed Qui-Gon's arm.

 

*

 

Tatooine, Qui-Gon decided, squinting in the early evening doubled suns-light, was every bit the sandy hellhole that its description had promised. And Mos Espa, the largest of the few spaceports on the planet, looked – and felt, and smelled – to be one of the nastier cauldrons of grime, crime and despair it had been Qui-Gon's lot to visit.

But this was the place. Somewhere in this sorry spaceport town, Knight Kp'tagh and Master Alteer had felt at least one Force presence and possibly two, both as bright as a small sun. But they'd already been shepherding younglings bound for the creche, and hadn't time nor safety to try tracking what they'd sensed, the more so as the presences had vanished abruptly as if shields had been suddenly raised.

It was that very factor that gave Qui-Gon hope, because a youngling mind would have neither the strength nor training to vanish like that. But an older, trained one well might, and might be the key to unlock the puzzle that had both stymied and sustained Qui-Gon for nearly eight years now. He needed, very much, to find that key.

 _There is no passion, there is serenity._ Qui-Gon snorted. Indeed.

The Force seemed a light thrum in the back of his mind as he and Micah walked away from the bay they'd docked their small long-range shuttle in and toward the city proper, such as it was. Micah's pilot-padawan, Garen Muln, had requested to stay with the ship for several reasons, starting with “the only security here I'm trusting is our lightsabres” and ending with “sand!” Master Giiett, after a few pointedly teasing comments, had agreed.

“All right,” Micah said, stopping in the shadow thrown by the first of a cobbled splatter of buildings, all the same tones of beige and disrepair. He hooked his thumbs around the edges of his belt, a wide concoction of synthleather and metal. His stocky figure looked broader than usual in the unfamiliar shirt and vest, and the still fierce suns-light gleamed off the shaved patterns on his head. Neither of them wore visible Jedi clothing; Tatooine was a place where the less attention paid to a being, the better. “Do we have a direction?”

Meaning, was Qui-Gon's powerful connection to the Living Force providing one? Micah was as much an iconoclast in his own way as Qui-Gon was, insisting that his students depend on common sense as well as the Force. But he was more than happy to use the best method of the moment, and apparently this was Qui-Gon's moment.

Qui-Gon put himself fully into _n_ _ow,_ listening to that thrum. “This way.” He resumed walking, keeping his pace easy.

Micah matched his stride without noticeable effort, despite their height difference. “Keep in mind about finding those spare parts Garen mentioned.”

“Prescience?” Qui-Gon generally dismissed that gift as unreliable and even paralyzing, although his experiences with Obi-Wan had forced him to reconsider. The future was too fluid: the Living Force was all about staying in the Moment.

“Not as such, but Garen's got a knack for the things he flies that I've learned not to question.”

“Obi-Wan is good with machinery, as well,” Qui-Gon said, and perhaps he said it just to see the barest tightening of his friend's mouth. Qui-Gon was competent, it was a necessary skill for any mission-bound Jedi, but Obi-Wan's abilities quite outstripped his, even at his padawan's young age.

His padawan.

Qui-Gon's own mouth tightened. _Force,_ _ **please**_ _,_ _let this_ _be real._

They wove their way through the patternless streets, filled with rather more variety of beings and species than Qui-Gon had expected. Tatooine was hardly a trades crossroads, after all.

 _But it is firmly under Hutt control,_ _which does in fact make it a trades crossroads, if one far outside of Republic space. And_ _outside of_ _much of any concept of decency, either,_ he thought, noting another swirl of citizenry up to no good.  The Hutts dealt, efficiently and enthusiastically, in everything vile, up to and including the slavery of sentients.

_Oh, Obi-Wan. How is it that the Force has placed you here? And why?_

Because his student was here, he had to be. Their impossible training bond was still thin with disuse and blocked with some of the thickest shields Qui-Gon had yet felt, but it was undeniably there. And getting stronger.

Neither the bitter-dry smell nor the miasma of hard-use and desperation eased as they walked, and yet here and there, Qui-Gon noticed beings with smiles that weren't forced, and younglings by their parents and even clustered together, engaged in games perhaps and other things involving happy noises.

 _Even here, the Light is._ Qui-Gon spared a half-smile for far too many years exposed to Yoda's syntax.

The Force nudged him at nearly the same time Micah stopped him with a touch to his arm. For all that the Force was not a sentient thing, there were moments when it almost felt so and this was one of them.

“Junk dealer,” Micah said, motioning. Across the street, a faded sign in Basic and Huttese proclaimed “Watto's Shop.” The top of the building was dominated by a bell-shaped structure, unlike anything else they'd yet seen here. “I think we should have a poke in there.”

“Yes, I think we should.”

They were nearly run over – or rather flown down – by an overweight Toydarian coming out the entrance. “Hey, watch where – oh.” The words were snapped out and then the blue being paused and looked them over, and moved to one side, wings fluttering madly. “You beings looking for something in particular?”

“We are merely browsers, good ser,” Micah said in smoothly put-on tones, amusing Qui-Gon no end.

“Yeah, you 'n half the galaxy,” the Toydarian groused, orange eyes pinching in obvious disgust. “If you got questions, Shmi'll have the answers. I'm late.”

“The proprietor? Friendly sort,” Qui-Gon opined, after the winged being had headed down the street.

“He wasn't shooting at us,” Micah said, deadpan.

“There is that.”

The round interior of the shop was pleasantly cool compared to the street, with a faint updraft that made Qui-Gon suspect some sort of passive venting system. It was also more than tall enough for him to stand upright, which was always a relief.

In fact, the center seemed to be clear space, sunlit from unseen windows and leading up into the bell-shape he'd noted earlier, and a curious smell drifted down from it. Qui-Gon glanced up, noting the assortment of parts, bits and bobs hanging everywhere –

“May I assist you, sers?”

He looked back to see a humanoid woman emerge from around the edge of the counter-workbench. Dark hair pulled back in a neat coil of braid at her neck, dark eyes in a pleasant face above a pleasing figure. Qui-Gon didn't need to look at Micah to see his friend's smile.

“Perhaps you may, Lady –?” Micah began.

“My name is Shmi, good ser, only that,” she said, perfectly polite in a way that didn't invite further inquiry. “What parts or mechanicals are you seeking?”

Micah began naming parts from Garen's wish list, slowly, as if memory wasn't cooperating with him. Qui-Gon listened with half an ear, the rest of him listening to the Force. Currents here, faint impressions – no. Not faint. Shielded. A definite Force strength, shielded but not fully, brightness leaking through. A swell, close but not, as if –

“ – quite possibly, with some work, let me ask – ” Pattering of footsteps as a small entity darted through the open archway and down the stairs on the far side of the room and skidded to a stop next to Shmi. “Ani, there you are, do we have – Ani?”

Qui-Gon went still, watchful, as the sense of Force presence surged.

“Oh, wow.” A little boy, also humanoid, perhaps seven or eight years old Standard, stared back at him, blue eyes wide beneath a shock of ragged blond hair. “Wow. You're early.”

Qui-Gon blinked.

“Early?” Micah echoed. “We are travelers on our own schedule, young one, and therefore right on time.”

The boy – Ani? – looked up at Micah with an assessing, eerily adult expression, and then back at Qui-Gon, and nodded to himself like he'd just had a theory confirmed.

“Anakin?” Shmi questioned, softly.

“It's okay, Mom,” Anakin said. “They're Jedi.”

Micah didn't move a muscle, but Qui-Gon felt him snap into alert. “And why would you think that?”

“'cause you're here looking for me,” Anakin said, his gaze still trained on Qui-Gon. “And my friend Ben.”

Ben.

The Force _chimed,_ one pure, sweet note in Qui-Gon’s mind, and the training bond quivered like a plucked string.

Qui-Gon's breath caught, and all at once he placed the child's face. He took two steps forward and sank to one knee, putting himself nearly at Anakin's height. “Does your friend Ben go by – another name, sometimes?”

“He – ”

“Anakin! What – ”

That voice.

Qui-Gon jerked back to his feet at the same moment another being came through the same opening that Anakin had and stopped dead. For a moment, no one spoke.

Qui-Gon just stared.

Reflected suns-light backlit the young man at the stop of the stairs and caught in the shoulder-length fall of hair, firing it a bright red-gold. Thinner than he should be and far more tanned and freckled, no doubt from the unforgiving climate. Unfamiliar clothing in achromatic shades, the same rough, wrapped, nondescript stuff worn by most others in the port.

But his face was the same, if too worn; his eyes that clear blue-gray, now wide and surprised. The chin with its deep cleft, and the generous mouth open in shock that rippled through the Force.

“He does go by another name sometimes.” Anakin's voice snuck into the tableau, a blend of mischief and satisfaction, but Qui-Gon couldn’t tear his gaze away.

Qui-Gon took a step forward, the Force all but singing in the back of his head. “Obi-Wan.”

Ben's – _Obi-Wan's_ – eyes went impossibly wider. “You _**know**_ me?”

“Of course I know you.” Qui-Gon knew he was wearing a bright, broadening smile and he could not possibly have cared less. ~ _Padawan._ ~

The shields on the other end of the training bond didn’t so much fall then as shatter, joy electrifying the connection. Obi-Wan’s presence in the Force bloomed around them, familiar and brilliant and far stronger than Qui-Gon remembered, almost frighteningly so, but warm as sunlight after an endless winter. Someone, possibly Micah, took a sharp breath.

~ _Master._ _ **How**_ _–_ ~ Obi-Wan’s throat moved in a visible swallow. “Qui-Gon. Oh, I have missed you.”

Someone moved, and they were in each other’s embrace, Qui-Gon’s arms around Obi-Wan’s back and the younger man’s arms tight around Qui-Gon’s waist like he’d never let go again. It felt like finding a piece he hadn’t known was lost, like love all-encompassing; like touching the Force for the very first time. Qui-Gon closed his eyes against the building sting. ~I _have missed you as well, my Padawan. It is good to touch you at last,_ _here_ _._ ~

~ _… here._ ~ A sense of a million questions but no alarm, only that near-unbearable happiness. ~ _How_ _ **do**_ _you know me, my Master?_ ~

~ _Have we not met_ _in dreams for years now?_ ~ Qui-Gon sent back, edged with laughter, because all that mattered was Obi-Wan _**here**_ , warm and solid, smelling of sand and sweat and metal. The _**how**_ could wait until later. ~ _Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten everything I’ve taught you?~_

Laughter in return, touched with mischief and shimmering like the jewel-toned _chia_ _r_ birds in the Temple gardens. ~ _I_ _have_ _forgotten none of it, Master, even the things I didn’t agree with. Perhaps especially those._ _But …_ _dreams?_ _~_ Obi-Wan leaned back and Qui-Gon had to open his eyes now, had to watch that unfairly endearing wrinkle appear between his student’s brows –

Micah cleared his throat.

Force help him, Qui-Gon had nearly forgotten anyone else was in the room.

“I think,” Anakin said, sounding utterly smug as only a young child could, “that we wanna go home now, where there are doors that lock.”

Obi-Wan twitched, squeezed his eyes shut, and blushed, to Qui-Gon’s confused surprise, before resting his forehead against Qui-Gon’s chest. “Anakin … ”

“That was not called for, Ani,” Shmi said.

“But possibly accurate,” Micah said slowly, staring hard at them, tapping a finger against his chin, the sort of expression starting on his face that Qui-Gon had distrusted for years.

Anakin looked up at the other Master, a curious gleam in his eyes.

Obi-Wan groaned softly across the bond. ~ _You know,_ _I was_ _delighted_ _to see Master Giiett until that happened. T_ _hat could be the start of a truly terrifying friendship, right there._ ~

Still confused, Qui-Gon looked down at the coppery hair just below his chin. ~ _You know Micah?_ ~ The dreams had always been just he and Obi-Wan until that very last one; just the two of them. Hadn’t they?

A mental sigh. ~ _Anakin’s right about one thing: we_ _do_ _need to take_ _all of_ _this behind closed doors._ ~

 

*

 


	3. Revealed

*

 

The home Anakin Skywalker showed them into could be called “cozy” if one was feeling generous, but then Qui-Gon had seen both far better and far worse over his many years of field work. Shmi joined them shortly after, and Qui-Gon sat now at their table and watched her and Obi-Wan finish preparing a meal, moving around each other in the tight space with an ease that spoke of familiarity.

Micah had stepped outside earlier to comm Garen, both to check on his padawan and warn him that they might not return tonight, and reassure him that nothing had assaulted and eaten them. Anakin had then offered to show Master Giiett some of his current mechanical projects, and the two had disappeared to the far side of the dwelling.

From the look on Micah's face as he'd accepted, Qui-Gon wondered … _~You may have been correct.~_

~ _Of course I'm correct._ _~_ Obi-Wan 's sending was positively cheeky; if the younger man had possessed a tail it would have been twitching. ~ _About what, exactly?_ ~

“I think that given a chance, Anakin and Master Giiett may become good friends, despite the difference in their ages,” Qui-Gon said out loud. The wind was picking up outside, the sandstorm that Shmi had forecast earlier arriving now in strength.

“If Master Giiett is at all fond of things mechanical, then I would say that's a very good chance,” Shmi said. “And Anakin has always liked the company of beings older than himself, for friendship and for guidance, as well.”

Obi-Wan flinched.

Not physically, but Qui-Gon caught it anyway. ~ _Padawan?_ ~

~ _It's nothing._ ~

~ _Try that on someone who doesn't know you._ ~

The slightest hint of a laugh, and a faint shake of the copper head, hair caught back now in a half-tail much like Qui-Gon's own. ~ _Later, Master? Please._ ~

“Ben? If you would put this out?” Shmi put a dish in Obi-Wan's hands and held his fingers a moment or two longer than necessary, peering into his face. Obi-Wan graced her with a quick smile before turning to set the dish down in the middle of the table. Qui-Gon couldn’t feel her as more than a faint light, but he had suspicions about someone else shielding her. If Shmi wasn't Force-sensitive, he'd eat his left boot.

Shmi called for her son and got a yell back in response. She placed a second dish on the table as Obi-Wan sat down across from Qui-Gon, and shortly after Anakin and Micah appeared, the boy sliding quickly into the chair right next to Obi-Wan's.

The latemeal was a pleasant affair, with Micah picking up the conversational ball and hanging onto it, seemingly content to defer the hard questions about Obi-Wan for later on. He regaled the table with some of his own less fraught missions, the sorts of tales pulled out when trying to reassure a nervous parent that really, a life of service as a Jedi was not so bad.

Anakin listened with obvious interest but if Qui-Gon had to pick, he'd say the child's expression shuttled between “really?” and “heard that one before,” with a few flashes of “you have got to be kidding” when Micah's eyes were on Shmi.

Obi-Wan was fairly quiet, although he watched Qui-Gon almost constantly. But when he wasn’t staring, he did contribute some raised eyebrows and the occasional wry, dry comment. Delivered in elegant fashion and that voice much too urbane for the surroundings, they more than once had Qui-Gon laughing into his drink.

Qui-Gon himself was perfectly content to watch Obi-Wan.

His padawan was definitely thinner than he should be. Not the wiry solidity of someone who'd spent their entire young lifetime in the hard physical training of a Jedi, but rather the fine, almost frail-ness of a being who, although well now, was still recovering from a long illness of some kind.

Obi-Wan's hair was more copper-blond than the red of his younger days, and full of bright golden suns-lights. With it pulled back were revealed two thin braids, one behind each ear, a sight that made something in Qui-Gon's heart ache. Also curious was the small hoop through Obi-Wan's left earlobe; Qui-Gon had never known him to have any interest in jewelry beyond the usual adornments common on a padawan braid.

What occupied Qui-Gon more, though, were the things he couldn't physically see. Obi-Wan's Force aura was brilliant, open to Qui-Gon but with an edged feeling to it, almost – erratic. Undeniably Obi-Wan, but stronger than some of the masters Qui-Gon knew, and colored with – things he wasn't sure he understood. Undeniably of the Light, but no padawan, even one on the cusp of knighthood, was that powerful.

Nor should any padawan feel of the kind of – weariness, perhaps was the word, that Qui-Gon was sensing.

As much a conundrum as his apprentice, was the youngling beside him. Where Obi-Wan gave the impression of banked, if damaged, solidity, the Mastery of years of work, Anakin was raw power. Brilliant even through unsettlingly adult shields, it was like sitting by a thermal reactor. The child’s midichlorian count had to be extraordinary.

Clearly, simply having found his Obi-Wan was not going to be the solving of the mystery. Qui-Gon decided he quite liked that idea.

Although, the Force and all stars knew the Council wasn't going to like it, but then the Council hadn't liked much to do with Qui-Gon Jinn and his "mystery" for years, now had they? Walking Obi-Wan into that chamber was going to be something of a satisfying moment. 

Micah, being Micah, launched abruptly into “later on.” “So, Obi-Wan. You'll be coming back to Coruscant with us?”

Obi-Wan cut his eyes, very briefly, at Qui-Gon. ~ _I wondered how long he'd hold out._ ~

Qui-Gon's mouth twitched.

“I can't leave without Anakin and Shmi,” Obi-Wan said out loud.

Micah pushed his plate away and rested his forearms on the table. “Well, our shuttle's not terribly roomy but that shouldn't be a problem, as long as nobody minds cramped quarters.”

“I'm sure Watto would consider them just leaving 'a problem'.”

Micah's eyes narrowed. “I'm sure Watto can find others to employ.”

“Master Micah, Watto doesn't employ them,” Obi-Wan said, soft and precise. “He owns them.”

Shock painted Micah's face and his Force-aura, and a horrible feeling rose in Qui-Gon's chest. Followed swiftly by blazing-hot anger. He let himself feel it, fully, before he released it. Sweet Force, was that why – ? “Obi-Wan?”

“No, not me,” Obi-Wan said softly. “I've had – problems, but not that one.”

“Shmi, Anakin – I am sorry,” Micah was saying, all testing and teasing vanished. “This is not right.”

Shmi regarded him with calm eyes. “I was enslaved as a very young child, Master Giiett. I have never known anything else, nor has Anakin. But we live, and make the best of what fate has given us. And as owners go, Watto is fairly kind.”

“Kind or not, slavery is _**wrong,**_ ” Micah ground out. “Sentient beings are _**not**_ _**things**_ to be owned.”

From Anakin's expression, Qui-Gon thought Micah had just made a friend for life, but Shmi's tiny smile spoke of a hard-learned serenity. “Yet it is legal here and on many worlds. This is the Outer Rim, and Hutt space, Masters Jedi. Your Republic doesn't exist out here.”

“But this Jedi does,” Micah said, his jaw hardening. We'll get your bio-trackers out and you're coming with us.”

“Not unless you have a great deal of credit to spend, and I've heard much about the Jedi but never that they were rich.”

Micah looked taken aback. “What?”

“Have you any idea what happens to runaway slaves, Master Giiett? You will not put my son at the mercy of the bounty hunters.”

“Mom – ”

“ _ **No**_. We have talked about this, Anakin.” Serenity had vanished – Shmi's voice and her gaze, as she looked from Anakin to Micah and Qui-Gon, were edged in durasteel. “We will go free and clear, or not at all.”

A moment of silence, before Micah blew out a long, frustrated breath. “But you can leave, correct?” he asked Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan shook his head. “Not without them.”

“Ben.” Anakin wore an odd look. “Sure you can, it's – ”

“No, I can’t. I will not, Anakin, and that's not up for debate of any kind,” Obi-Wan said, his voice as hard as Shmi’s and much older than it should be. “I'm not going anywhere without the both of you.”

Anakin opened his mouth, and then closed it again, and a half-grin pulled his mouth up.

Obi-Wan’s expression softened, and he nodded. “Let me not make the same mistake twice, all right?”

Obviously there was a cruiser-load of subtext happening here, on top of the basic as-yet-unanswered questions. “Attachment, Obi-Wan?” Qui-Gon asked, but mildly.

“Not as such, Master.” Obi-Wan looked at him. “As I said, a error in judgment that I don't intend to – ”

“All right, enough of this,” Micah interrupted.

He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, straining the fabrics of his non-Jedi shirt and vest dangerously. “I think some answers are in order. Obviously Qui-Gon knows you,” he nodded at Obi-Wan, “and you him. However, you act like you know me as well, while Anakin knew Qui-Gon but not me, while Lady Skywalker knows neither of us but she _does_ know what's going on.

“Obi-Wan – if that's your name – I don't know you. I have never met you, and moreover, there's no record in the Archives of anyone with your name being in the creche or considered as an Initiate, for the Coruscant Temple or any other one.”

Qui-Gon blinked. “You looked him up?”

“Of course I looked him up. As did you. And as you certainly would have done if our situations had been reversed.” Micah cut his gaze briefly at Qui-Gon and then back to Obi-Wan.

This was Micah in Councilor-mode and it rasped on Qui-Gon's nerves, as it always had.

Obi-Wan was still, his face giving nothing away. The perfect image of Jedi serenity. What was leaking faintly through the training bond said otherwise.

“It's time,” Micah said, “for everyone to be let in on the secrets.”

Obi-Wan's clear-water eyes met Qui-Gon's, and Qui-Gon sent reassurance over the bond. ~ _You_ _ **are**_ _my padawan. Nothing will change that,_ ~ and felt something ease in the younger man.

“I had hoped,” Obi-Wan said to Micah, “to only have to do this once, in front of the Council.”

“Since I'm on the Council, consider this a trial run.”

“It's – complicated.”

“Of course it is.” Micah's voice was very dry.

Obi-Wan looked like he was gathering thoughts, or perhaps words. “Those dreams we have had, Qui-Gon, and my training: for about eight years?”

 _We_. That was a lovely word. “Yes,” Qui-Gon agreed.

“And they stopped about a month ago.”

Qui-Gon nodded.

“So you _were_ having those dreams, together, about that training?” Micah asked.

Obi-Wan's mouth quirked. “Apparently. It seems I _was_ dreaming with Qui-Gon, although I certainly didn't know that at the time. For me, they weren't dreams as much as they were – well, they were memories, of when those events actually happened.”

“What do you mean, 'when they actually happened'?” Micah asked, eyes narrowed. “'When' did they happen?”

“For me? More than forty years ago.”

Qui-Gon's jaw dropped.

“Or they haven't happened yet; take your pick,” Obi-Wan said, cheeky again.

Micah looked like he'd been smacked in the back of the head with a rock. A fair match for how Qui-Gon felt, actually. “Forty – what?!”

Obi-Wan gave them both a crooked smile. “Imagine how I felt. How Anakin and I both felt,” he said, glancing at the boy at his side.

“Enough cryptic.” Micah didn't quite snap the words out, but it was close. “In plain Basic, if you please.”

“Plain Basic.” The cheekiness vanished as Obi-Wan set his shoulders and Qui-Gon realized, with a chilling certainty he could not push away, that a much older man, weary and scarred, was looking out of his padawan's eyes. “I lived my life, more than six decades full, and I died, and I remember it. Now, in some way I don't pretend to even remotely understand, other than to call it the Will of the Force, I am here, in this temporal stream, at twenty-some years old.

“In the last years of my life, I was – very alone, and I dreamed many times about my apprenticeship,” he smiled a faint smile at Qui-Gon, “reliving happier times, although evidently it was much more than that. Although how we dreamed _together_?” He shrugged narrow shoulders. “My conjecture – and that’s all it is, is conjecture – is that this time-stream runs decades behind the one Anakin and I left. Temporal Theory has always made my head hurt.”

He shared a look of brief amusement with Anakin. “In any case, a month ago, things – changed. And now I am here and so is Anakin.”

Micah was staring at him hard. “You are saying this is – that you've come back in time. Both of you.”

“Yes.” Obi-Wan inclined his head slightly. “Although sideways through time would perhaps be more accurate. It's the only explanation I have, though.”

“That you've lived this life, your life – once before.”

“My life, yes. _This_ life? No. Not like this. Anakin's life seems close to the same, but for me, things are – very different, here.” Obi-Wan stared at the table top as though carefully choosing words from its scarred surface. “In this timeline my family did not give me to the Jedi, and so you found no record of me.”

“There is no record of your name, even.”

“I suppose there wouldn't be. My birth parents changed it when I was given to the Temple. Here, they refused, and so there is no Obi-Wan Kenobi. Here, I grew up as Ben Lars,” an undecipherable expression crossed Obi-Wan's face, “troubled youth. And I have those memories, even though it wasn't – me.”

“And the 'trouble' occurred because of your Force-sense,” Qui-Gon said slowly. Not an unfamiliar situation, sadly – it was a main reason why parents were so urged to give their offspring to the Jedi. “You – he? – knew things, sensed things, did things that you did not understand and could not control.”

As impossible as this all sounded, Qui-Gon _knew_ that Obi-Wan was telling them the truth. It explained so much – what he felt from Obi-Wan now, and the last near-decade of Qui-Gon's own life – to an unsettlingly precise degree.

Obi-Wan nodded. “Yes. So he resorted to taking spice. Which,” he spread his hands wide, “didn't make anything make much more sense, but it didn't make any less sense, either.”

“So,” Micah said. “You're a drug addict.”

“ _Was,_ ” Obi-Wan said, short and sharp. “No longer. As soon as I understood what, what _Ben_ , had done to himself, I began to purge it. I was able to burn the addiction out once I regained some Force control, but it turns out that it takes a lot longer to undo other effects spice has on the human body.”

Which explained the physical symptoms of lingering illness, Qui-Gon realized.

~ _Yes,_ ~ Obi-Wan sent softly. ~ _I think I've been able to undo much of the damage, but my Force control is not what it should be. And my speed, agility, muscle tone? I have to train them all back. I'm in the worst shape physically that I've **ever** been._ ~

The tone of utter disgust almost made Qui-Gon laugh.

Micah was watching Obi-Wan, his expression considering. “You know, I'm sure, how impossible this is – ”

“ – you don't believe him?”

Micah paused and looked at Anakin. The boy's bristle was obviously protective; of Obi-Wan? More than just fellow travelers, then; clearly he and Obi-Wan were deeply connected.

“Give me a reason why I should,” Micah said, sitting more upright. He had laid his hands together palm to palm and was twisting them slowly. More intrigued than outraged, Qui-Gon knew; Micah had always loved a puzzle (witness his support of Qui-Gon these last years), and better if it flew in the face of convention. “If you've this knowledge, this vision of the future, then tell us something.”

Anakin shifted again, his eyes narrowing, but subsided as Obi-Wan put a gentle hand on his arm.

“Vision,” Obi-Wan said, and huffed, staring at some point through the table before he blinked and looked at Qui-Gon, then back at Micah. “Everything I ever learned about temporal mechanics screams that I should not, but … Given the year … ” The familiar double-furrow appeared between copper eyebrows. “The Yinchorri are restless right now, correct?”

Micah snorted. “The Yinchorri have been restless for at least twenty years, that's no secret.”

Obi-Wan regarded him with those old, old eyes. “When the call comes in from Mayvitch Seven, for the love of every god you know, get better intel before Knight Naeshahn and her padawan are sent into that mess. The Yinchorri are immune to mind-tricks, and they'll have cortosis armor and all the ships they can steal from the Golden Nyss Shipyards before they destroy the Yards, completely.”

Micah gaped at him, and something in Qui-Gon's chest went ice-cold.

“By the time the Council gets the warning, the Yinchorri will already have taken the whole of the Chalenor system. The Chancellor will ask the Jedi to quell the uprising.”

“You mean mediate?”

“No, I don't. The Yinchorri have no interest in anything except conquest. In my – time, eventually fourteen Jedi went, including four members of the Council.” Obi-Wan's voice held the kind of evenness one got when one had gone far past tired and straight into numb. “Nine of them were lost.”

“Council members?" Micah's voice was sharp with disbelief. “What in Force happened to lose us a _Council member?_ ”

Obi-Wan only looked at him. “I don't know. You never came back to tell us.”

In the utter silence following, Qui-Gon heard his own heartbeat like thunder in his ears. Icy shock flashed across his whole body this time, like being dropped into a near-frozen sea, and it took a moment to find his breath.

Micah was going to die.

A sudden surge of heat across the training bond. ~ _He's **not** going to die,_ ~ Obi-Wan said, abruptly fierce. ~ _None of them are going to die if there's any way I can stop it._ ~

Oddly, Micah himself was calm, as if he'd gotten what he was looking for. “Mic?” Qui-Gon managed after a long, strangled minute.

“The Force has been, not shouting, maybe more like trilling danger in my ear for the last few months, things that might be warnings in my dreams,” Micah said. “So, not precisely a shock, but still … ” He settled his shoulders. “The question is now, Padawan, – ”

Obi-Wan's non-expression relaxed into something closer to a smile.

“ – how do we get the rest of the Council on-board? They're not likely to welcome the problem that is you with open arms.”

Silence fell again, broken by Anakin this time. “That was the second big gambit, y'know; the Yinchorri thing,” he said quietly, seemingly apropos of nothing.

Obi-Wan looked at him. “Was it? I wondered, later.”

Anakin nodded. “It – got revealed. You know there's a lot I don't remember – ”

“And I hope you never do,” Obi-Wan whispered, a sense of some old, vast grief leaking through his shields.

“ – but Yinchorr, it made Valorum look really bad, so when the blockade happened … ”

Obi-Wan nodded this time, his focus a million parsecs away.

All right, that was quite enough. Qui-Gon had no clue what Anakin was talking about, but later for that. _Stay_ _in the Moment._

Qui-Gon kicked his brain into drive, added eight and four, and got twenty. “Something happened, didn't it,” he said, resting his elbows on the table and trying to catch Obi-Wan's eyes. “Something very bad happened. To you.”

“To everyone. It was the end.”

“Of?” Qui-Gon put a touch of snap into his voice.

It worked. Obi-Wan breathed in and met Qui-Gon’s eyes. Qui-Gon felt him collect himself and center, but only for a moment before that astonishing control clamped down, leaving a serene Jedi surface. It also left Qui-Gon with an unseemly touch of pride. He'd had some small hand in training this one, he or some version of himself? His padawan was showing a control in the Force that some masters couldn't claim.

“The end of the Republic,” Obi-Wan said simply, but his gaze was bleak. “The end of the Jedi.”

 

*


	4. Claimed

 

Obi-Wan flatly refused to say anything more specific after that, and one look forbade Anakin from answering as well.  He deflected both Qui-Gon's and Micah's questions at first with his own worries about causing damage he couldn't even begin to imagine yet.  Then by falling silent, his discomfort moiling around the edges of his shields, out into the Force around them.

Finally he simply stood and walked outside, alone, the sandstorm having mostly subsided.  Anakin glared at them then, and Shmi added a few pointed comments of her own.

Micah elected to leave them after that, ostensibly to free up what little extra space the Skywalker domicile possessed for Qui-Gon to sleep in, but truly, Qui-Gon knew, to send a carefully-worded message to the Council, one that Shmi, Anakin and Obi-Wan didn't need to hear and neither did their slave-row neighbors.

Apparently willing to talk as long as the future was not the subject, Obi-Wan had advised traveling with care. “Mos Espa is unhealthy at night, more-so for strangers.”

Micah shrugged. “It'll be a chance to practice my 'notice me not' skills.”

“Be aware that some of the locals are damn near immune to Force suggestion, including Toydarians, and tend to quite enjoy a stroll about town after dark,” Obi-Wan said, that cut-crystal diction of his making a droll reappearance.

“Consider me warned,” Micah said, and inclined his head. “My thanks, Padawan Kenobi.”

Oh, Qui-Gon had waited years to hear that.

Now he leaned against the outside edge of the hovel door and found his padawan sitting partway up the narrow steps that led to a sealed-off third story room, the one Shmi and Anakin had been able to take over and convert to a 'fresher. As slave quarters went, the Skywalkers' was positively luxurious. Which was appalling in its own right, but … Qui-Gon shook his head. “May I join you?”

“Always. Please,” Obi-Wan said softly, the welcome echoing in the bond. He slipped off the step and moved to the other side of the sandy walk that led to the Skywalkers' door, and perched himself on the wall bordering it, one leg beneath him.

Qui-Gon sat on the wall next to him, and let the night gather them in. The sky was perfectly clear now, and as his eyes adjusted, the panoply of the galaxy gradually appeared, gorgeously dense and brilliant.

“I believe this is one of the clearest night-skies I've ever seen,” Qui-Gon said, after some moments.

“Hm.” Obi-Wan shifted, looking up now himself, where before he’d been watching Qui-Gon. “Tatooine doesn't have much of anything to recommend it in the daylight, but at night? The stars are almost worth living here.”

The young man could not be serious. “Truly?”

“No,” Obi-Wan said, and his elegant voice was positively alight with mischief. “But I've tried over the years to apply those many lectures about finding Joy in the Moment.”

Qui-Gon smiled up at all those points of light. “You truly are a terribly impudent padawan.”

“Yes, my Master,” Obi-Wan said, low and velvety, and really, Qui-Gon couldn't remember the last time he'd been this happy. “You don't know,” Obi-Wan went on after a few minutes, “for just how long I've wanted to say those words to you again.”

“I confess myself more than eager to claim you as my student within the Temple, for all to know.” Qui-Gon looked at the familiar stranger by his side, gave in to temptation and laid his hand, gently, on Obi-Wan's knee. “Yoda has expected me to appear with you one day, I am fairly sure. Few others have, though, if any.”

“I am very much looking forward to seeing the Temple again.” But something else hovered under Obi-Wan's cultivated tone.

“What troubles you, Obi-Wan?”

“What doesn't? No, it's just – I've wanted more than anything to see you, but this isn't going to be easy, Qui-Gon.”

Qui-Gon chuckled. “Few things worthwhile are.”

“Master.” The impression of a sigh. “I'm … I have long been accustomed, now, to doing things in my own fashion, and it may not always align with yours.”

“Then we will learn from each other.”

“We're going to argue.”

Qui-Gon laughed outright. “Of course we are. You've disagreed with me from the beginning, Padawan, and usually in some cleverly diplomatic way. I enjoy our arguments, most of the time. I've never asked my apprentices to be doormats, surely you know that?”

“Mah-ster … ” The sigh was more definite this time.

“Pa-dawan.” Qui-Gon squeezed the knee beneath the rough fabric before releasing it, seeing the gleam of Obi-Wan's eyes, the cast of his face in the starlight. “What is this, really?”

“It's … Are you sure? You've dreamed of me but you're like to find that I am a bit more – problematic – in the flesh, so to speak,” Obi-Wan said wryly. “I attained my own Mastery. I raised my own padawan to Knighthood. I _am_ older than I look. Despite my physical age now, I'm – ” He stopped then, and his eyes widened, and he said something soft and remarkably obscene in Mando'a.

“Obi-Wan?”

“I – was going to say that I'm your age, but that's not right. I'm older than you. Much older,” and he touched a finger to his temple. Black amusement underlaid with an old, aching sadness colored the Force around them. “I, I thought I'd gotten used to that,” he whispered.

Then he squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, his entire face contorting.

“Obi-Wan,” Qui-Gon said, uneasily. He put his hand to the younger man's shoulder, and almost staggered as emotion flooded through the bond. Not just sadness. _Anguish_. Grief, deep and immense.

“Padawan,” he said, shaken. What had happened to this man?

Obi-Wan swallowed, and his shields slammed closed. “… sorry. I'm sorry, it's just … ”

Attachment be damned. Qui-Gon wrapped both arms around Obi-Wan and pulled him close, threaded fingers into his hair and pressed the red-gold head to his own shoulder.

A moment of resistance and then Obi-Wan leaned into him hard, hands locking onto Qui-Gon's upper arms and long fingers digging in. “Please be real,” he begged in a whisper like fractured glass. “This is all – I can't – I _need_ you to be real, _please_ – ”

“Sssst, it’s alright.”

“ – I – ”

“ – as real as the Force,” Qui-Gon promised. “I have you, I'm here. _You're_ here. This is real,” he murmured, smoothing his hand over Obi-Wan's hair. “Feel it. Let the hurt flow through you and out, release it. Give it to the Force … ”

Qui-Gon held him close, braced him; held him as the torrent of emotion rocked him and began to dissipate, took what escaped through into the bond and released that as well. ~ _The Force will hold it all._ ~

And after, a kind of silence.

Obi-Wan was warm against him, and fit as well as Qui-Gon had always known he would, head against Qui-Gon’s collarbone. Living and breathing and here, and Qui-Gon knew him now, the vibrancy and the bright-sharp smell of him, like a green thing that didn’t grow on this world without patient, stubborn, endless effort.

After a bit, Qui-Gon found the thin braid behind Obi-Wan’s right ear and gave it a little tug. “ _This_ is real. Although why you thought you needed two of these … ” he teased, drawing the words out.

A huff of air against his neck.

“I had never thought you guilty of vanity, Padawan, although the earring, now ... One braid suffices for most other beings, you know. Or is it a sudden burning desire for more markers?”

The huff became a definite snicker, although it sounded a bit choked. “One's a status claim, but two is just a fashion statement, like the earring,” Obi-Wan muttered as he finally pulled back, and freed one hand to drag a sleeve across his eyes. “It's about hiding in plain sight. Not that I learned that from you, of course.”

“Impudent _and_ irreverent,” Qui-Gon said, giving the short braid a final tug before letting go altogether.

“Little gods,” Obi-Wan said on a sigh. “That was not the way to impress you with my great maturity and experience, was it? I’m s– ”

“You,” Qui-Gon interrupted, “have been living with a situation which I am, frankly, still struggling to comprehend. With memories of things obviously incredibly painful – with what sounds like the literal end of the galaxy, and I hope that you’ll let me share that burden in some way.

“Yet I feel, just as obviously, that they have not made you bitter, or broken. If anything, they have only made you more kind. What more could I ever ask of you, or of any Jedi?” He put his hand on Obi-Wan’s shoulder again, and shook his head. “That I could think that I might have had anything at all to do with the fashioning of – ”

“I strive every day of my life to be worthy of your teachings, Master. Anything good that I am, you had _everything_ to do with,” Obi-Wan said, softly fierce, staring up at him. “Don’t ever doubt that.”

Which was in no way true, but now was sadly not the time to argue the point. Qui-Gon settled for squeezing Obi-Wan's shoulder, feeling bone too close to the surface. Well, Qui-Gon could help begin to fix that, at least. “Sleep, Obi-Wan. For both of us. I sense tomorrow will be a long day.”

*

“ … and the Council wants to see you as soon as we return,” Micah said as they turned the corner into the docking bay. “They wanted to speak to you immediately, but I did manage to insist on it waiting that long, at least. Not a subject to discuss over the comms, even our secure ones.”

“No doubt they do,” Qui-Gon agreed serenely, and caught Obi-Wan, who had accompanied them back to their ship, shooting him the side-eyes look that meant he was quite sure Qui-Gon was up to something. He would find out soon enough.

The time Qui-Gon had spent in meditation this morning had not turned up a different answer than the one the Force had shown him last night. No, his path was quite clear.

“Qui-Gon.” Micah stopped just short of the shuttle's ramp and looked up at him. “Why do I think there's an argument about to happen here?”

“Not unless you insist on there being one, Micah.” A long sigh of breath out through his nose was Micah's answer to that, and Qui-Gon's mouth quirked. “I'll get my pack and you can be off.”

“Wait. You're staying? Here?” Obi-Wan's voice rose.

“I am,” Qui-Gon said, turning to his padawan, whose eyebrows were riding high. “There is much to accomplish and I cannot properly do my part if I am not here with you and young Anakin.”

“You're going to defy the Council on this?”

“I will do as I must, Obi-Wan.”

Obi-Wan blinked, then a small burst of air escaped him as he squeezed his eyes shut. A tangled wash of joy, annoyance, and – discomfort? drifted through the bond.

“Padawan?”

“Nothing,” Obi-Wan muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Just a really bad moment of deja vu.”

“No surprise; knowing Master Jinn, I’d suspect that’s a phrase you’ve heard before,” Micah said, quite solemnly.

Obi-Wan leveled a finely-tuned almost-glare at both of them impartially, and Micah burst out laughing. “You may just have a second thought or three on this, Qui.”

“No I won’t,” Qui-Gon said easily. Even with a lifetime of honing his connection with the Living Force, he’d rarely been as sure of anything as he was of this. “I am meant to train my apprentice as much and as far as I am able and that’s what I intend to do. As long as he is willing to have me, I am in no hurry to give him up.”

He felt as much as saw Obi-Wan’s minute start of surprise.

Why surprise at that?

It was the work of only a few minutes to retrieve his pack and say farewell to Micah and an all-too-curious Padawan Muln, and in very short order he was standing with Obi-Wan on the dirty sands of the docking bay and watching the T-5 shuttle lift smoothly into the sky.

“You know,” Obi-Wan said, slowly, as they began to make their way back to the slave quarter row, “before – you were rather more – amenable – to finish with me, have me go on to my Trials.”

“Before” meaning: in his previous life? Little gods, but that would take some getting used to.

And oh, but there were layers in Obi-Wan’s last sentence.

“Was I?” Qui-Gon glanced at the young man walking not the padawan's two paces behind but right at Qui-Gon's side instead, as though born to do just that, and caught again a hint of some earlier pain, like a faint echo of a very old hurt. “Well, I can’t speak for what another me did, before. But be assured, my friend, that I’ve absolutely no intention of being that sort of idiot in _this_ time.”

Obi-Wan let out a surprised bark of laughter, his smile sharp-edged in the suns-light.

* * *

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> 10.22.17  
> [6.5.17]
> 
> This author owes an unpayable debt to many more fanfic authors than she remembers the names of, for the re-imaginings of THE PHANTOM MENACE that have enriched my own daydreams for so long. Probably the foremost of these is Flamethrower and her incomparable ReEntry saga, and the reader's sharp eye will probably pick out resonances and echoes, but hopefully nothing actually lifted. I came to love Micah and a number of other characters through her words, and hopefully have managed NOT to get too close. With any luck, I've succeeded. Nearly everybody back in the day wrote a fix-it for TPM – it was practically a rite of passage there for a while, and so, here is mine. 
> 
> While I enjoyed the Jedi Apprentice books and have freely mined them and other Legends stuff for bits, points, and inspiration, I don't regard them as canon any more than I do any of the EU books, which are frankly a large, unwieldy, and oxymoronic mess. Canon is what was on-screen, per GL himself: no more and no less. If the reader has chosen to love the EU, great. More power to you and gods-speed, but please don't expect my tales to line up with them.
> 
> This story is the first of, with any luck, an entire universe. The second story is well on its way and already clocks in at more than 17,000 words, so if you enjoyed this first one, do let me know. Kudos, comments, and concrit are most often the writer's only bread and salt and pepper. The lack of them isn't necessarily fatal, but their addition definitely makes the meal more flavorful and much, much more inspiring to construct.
> 
> Last but by no means least, this author owes her soul to culturevulture73, HollyC, sanerontheinside, and everyone on tumblr who was kind enough to read the scraps of this previous posted and ask for more. You are all awesome.


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